Manual for Integrated District Planning - National Institute of Rural ...

Manual for Integrated District Planning
Spatial planning has to be part of the district planning process at all levels. However,
if technology, capacity and the lack of guidelines are limiting factors, they must at
least permeate to the level of the municipality plan, if not at the ward-level plans
to begin with. This will give an idea to all the local representatives of the spatial
element of each level’s plan. Examples of spatial planning undertaken in India are
described in Boxes 62 and 63.
Box 62: Spatial planning in Kollam district, Kerala
Kollam district in Kerala has wide ecological diversity ranging from the Western Ghats
to the Arabian sea coast. In 2003, the Kollam District Planning Committee initiated
the preparation of an integrated district development plan and local development
plan with special emphasis on the spatial aspect, under a project of the State Planning
Board, Kerala. The project aimed at further improving the well-established process
for preparation of development plans from the Panchayats and municipalities, by
introducing the spatial element into the decentralised planning process. The spatial
aspect was to be incorporated into every aspect of planning, such as data collection
as part of the stock-taking and envisioning exercise, presentation of data to decision
makers in the District Planning Committee and Panchayats, and finally to help in
visualising and depicting the plan. Because information was being collected and
presented location wise, the exercise hoped to prompt and encourage thinking in
the direction of proper land use planning. The project used geographic information
system (GIS) technology, which converged satellite images, cadastral data and socioeconomic
survey data in tabular form and integrated it into spatial presentations.
Sectoral analysis was done for 18 development sectors ranging from the primary
sector, to basic services in health education, provision of water, poverty alleviation
and rural development, infrastructure (roads, bridges, housing), forests, environment,
mining and geology, social welfare, women and child development, power and
telecommunication, tourism, culture, sports and youth affairs. In each of these
sectors both problems and initiatives were identified with location specific details.
Similarly, an analysis of the completed projects/programmes was done with locationspecific
analysis and suggestions. The exercise also incorporated human resource
development and availability of finances and presented these aspects spatially. Thus,
at every stage of the decentralised planning process and participative planning,
stakeholders were not only prompted to give suggestions on overall development
but also to take decisions as to the appropriate locations. Therefore, spatial decisions
also got captured into the participative process with prompting of suggestions and
solutions by the District Planning Committee.
Consequently, the integrated development plan of Kollam now contains a perspective
plan of 15-20 years dealing with long term issues such as settlement patterns, district
level policies for integrated development cutting across urban and rural areas, the
best spatial strategy that might be adopted for optimum utilisation of resources and
the long term perspective for regional infrastructure which covers water management,
energy, transport network and tourism. An execution plan has been drawn out from
this perspective plan and is implemented and monitored.
The project has given decision makers in local governments, the District Planning
Committee and other stakeholders the opportunity to consider and take decisions
in the emerging area of spatial planning. The Kollam experience, particularly the
methodologies developed by it can be easily upscaled to other districts too.
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